Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (8 page)

If his crew had to take the AI down by force, Absen wanted it to be as easy as possible.

On the other hand
, he speculated to himself,
if and when its consciousness is distributed among nodes around the ship, that fail-safe will not work.

A three-meter viewscreen hung on the wall and Absen could see the noses of holoprojectors poking from a dozen mounts. A dozen people clustered near a console, lab rats and engineers, Commander Ekara standing self-consciously off to the side. When the admiral walked in, they spread out in a loose semicircle, all but the power engineer wearing smiles ranging from nervous to ecstatic.

“Welcome, Admiral,” the woman in the center gushed, wiping her hands on her rumpled white coat and then extending one to Absen.

“Thank you, Doctor Egolu.” Absen nodded at Ekara and then shook hands with each of the technicians. “Please, carry on.”

“Yes, sir. It’s coming up on noon.” Egolu checked her watch ostentatiously. “That is when we will let Pandora out of the box,” she tittered.

Out of the corner of his eye Absen saw Ekara stiffen, and he cursed the lack of social judgment that seemed to be the eternal hallmark of pure scientists everywhere. “Nothing so drastic, I trust?” he asked with an edge of sharpness.

Besides, Pandora opened the box. She wasn’t in it.

Egolu’s elation collapsed suddenly, and she shook her head. “No, sir. We’ve run all the tests we can, and the AI has passed them with flying colors. She shows no sign of instability, and she’s progressed over the past months in recognizable developmental stages, just as a human child would. Only, of course, a lot faster.”

“Of course. Can I meet her now?”

“Oh, yes sir.” Egolu waved a hand at a tech on the end, who hastened to turn to the console and input a coded command.

Absen rubbed suddenly sweating palms together. Despite assurances that the new machine brain couldn’t access any systems, every story he’d ever heard about rogue computers, from Hal 9000 to Skynet to Desolator himself, tried to bubble up in his mind. He told himself that the scientists had been interacting with it – her – for weeks now; this was an introduction, a debut, not a Frankenstein’s vivification.

The big screen on the wall flashed for a moment, and then an odd background appeared. White, with striations, a pattern of something like feathers, or an exotic fabric. Then a woman’s face faded in before it, twentyish, a bit sisterly rather than perfect, with slightly dusky skin and dark hair. Fully realized in high definition, she appeared human, down to stray strands and a tiny mole along her jawline. Her eyes seemed to spear him and her lips parted to speak.

“Good afternoon, Admiral Henrich J. Absen,” came a rather ordinary voice from the speakers sitting on the deck. He had expected some kind of super-sexy sound, the female equivalent to Desolator’s deep announcer’s tones. Instead, she sounded more like the girl next door. “Pleased to meet you.”

Absen cleared his throat. “Hello. How are you?”
Inane, Henrich…but what else do you say to a woman in a box, who’s not a woman at all?

“Just great, sir. I’m eager to join the team.” Her mouth quirked upward.

Join the team. Desolator has been coaching her.
Then he asked a question he had prepared, a small thing, yet he wondered. “What shall we call you? ‘
Conquest’
?” That name seemed rather non-feminine, not fitting the woman on the screen.

On the screen her smile widened, showing slightly crooked teeth with longish canines. “I spent a bit of thought on that, Admiral. I settled on ‘Michelle.’” Her nostrils flared slightly and she dimpled with impish humor.

“Wow. You are so real,” he breathed, the exclamation drawn involuntarily.

“Thank you. Blame my father. He’s spent the last seven years trying to understand us humans, with limited success I’m afraid.”

“Us humans.” Suddenly Absen burst out laughing. “I like you, Michelle.” Then his face smoothed. “I hope to hell you aren’t just playing us for fools.”

“I understand why you say that, sir. All I can tell you is, anyone can be driven insane, given the right circumstances.”

“I understand that, but not everyone will have the power of a warship at her fingertips.”

“That’s why you installed the fail-safes,” she replied primly.

“Right. During your…education, did you ever see ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’?”

“Of course. I’ve watched thousands of mankind’s movies and read all the stories, as well as those of the Ryss and Sekoi. But your name’s not ‘Dave.’” Her cheek twitched.

“Funny. Then you have some idea of what we fear, and why we never built AIs to control our ships, no matter how efficient they might be.”

Michelle sighed. “I get it, I do. All I can say is, you’ll have to decide how much to trust me, and how much to hook me up to. I can be an advisor, or a manager, with everything routed through officers, but that would not be a good use of your tools.”

Absen laughed. “You’ve been studying me too, it seems.”

“Of course.”

“So tell me…why ‘Michelle’?”

“Because ‘Michael’ isn’t a girl’s name?”

Absen thought furiously for a moment. “As in, the archangel? Heaven’s commanding general?”

“Correct, Captain my Captain. Will you allow me to be connected to the holoprojectors?”

Absen turned to Doctor Egolu. “Are they isolated?”

“Yes, sir,” the chief scientist replied. “This room is shielded from everything else on the ship, unless we connect it. We are even running off a separate fuel cell.”

“Then go ahead.” He gestured at the fiber-optics.

Two of the white coats eagerly fitted a cable into a socket, and the tech at the console tapped his controls. The projectors lit up as power flowed to them, then a dome of light and a test pattern appeared for a moment before fading, leaving a figure standing on the deck.

Demure instead of terrifying, nevertheless the construct of light standing before him radiated a kind of subdued majesty, a magnetism as undeniable as it was ephemeral. Absen had expected something like Raphaela, the Blend that he had left behind in Earth’s system. Despite the shape of a woman, instead of sophistication, this one gave off warmth. Where Rae had been stunning and intimidating and heartrendingly attractive, Michelle seemed welcoming, matter-of-fact, sisterly.

Absen wondered how much was artifice and how much was…could one say ‘natural’?

Dressed not in an angel’s toga, rather she wore an EarthFleet naval warrant officer’s uniform, with a cuirass of body armor, a sidearm and a dagger.

And wings. Mustn’t forget the wings,
Absen marveled, watching them flutter behind her head. Like huge smooth swan’s pinions, they loomed white and pure, with golden highlights.

The lab rats smiled knowingly at his reaction. Obviously they had seen this before. He forced a smile onto his face, made himself not be irritated with them for their little surprise.

“Warrant Officer First Michelle Conquest reports for duty, sir,” she said, folding the wings and snapping off a precise salute.

Absen gravely returned it. “Glad to have you. Might want to lose the wings and dagger, though. Shall we say, formal occasions only?”

“Yes, sir. As you wish, sir.” The wings and knife faded from view, leaving a rather ordinary-looking WO1.

Absen thought her choice, or perhaps the choice of the team that prepped her, was clever. A warrant would be nominally subordinate to all officers, but outrank all of the enlisted. Warrants were normally technical experts, their license to command limited to their specialties, usually small teams. Yet they were highly respected, often promoted from among the brightest of the rank and file and given special training. They occupied a neither-fish-nor-fowl niche that gave them flexibility and the respect of all.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

The question seemed to give Michelle pause, and her eyes narrowed. “I’m not a Vulcan, sir.”

“Glad you got the reference. But you
are
a machine.”

Michelle’s lower lip quivered slightly and her eyes glistened with tears. At that moment she seemed pitifully young, despite the appearance of a woman of twenty, and Absen had to remind himself of what he’d been told – that this being, this
intelligence
, all of perhaps two months old, was still a child in some ways. He felt ashamed of himself for his harshness.

Michelle took a breath as if to calm herself. “I have a mechanical brain instead of an organic one, but my father designed my mind to be as human as possible, including my emotions. I can’t help the body I was born with, or the fact that I can never really be like the rest of you.” An edge of bitterness seemed to lurk beneath her words.

Absen struggled to remind himself that this was all programming, software made to emulate human attitudes.
But then again, what else is a human mind? Where is the true line? These themes have all been explored in science fiction, and intellectually I know them all, but it’s a bit different actually coming nose to nose with a sentient computer that looks like a human being.

And that’s where I’ve started to go wrong. She has on the uniform, but she’s really never even been to basic training. We’ll have to fix that, starting now, even if it does sting a bit.

“Ms. Conquest, if you really want to be an officer in EarthFleet, you will have to grow a thicker skin. I am your commanding officer, not your friend, and I am not at all sure you have earned that rank. Have you been through some kind of training, an academy, a warrant officer’s course?”

“I’ve downloaded every bit of information available about –”

“That’s not what I asked. Have you
experienced
military training?” Absen glanced over at the team of scientists. Egolu gave her head a little shake.

“No, sir,” Michelle said miserably.

Absen’s voice firmed to iron. “Then you will delete those warrant bars from your collar and replace them with candidate’s pips, right now. Bull!”

The major bolted to Absen’s side, his armored boots clattering on the deck. “Sir!”

“Get a scratch team together from anyone available that has had experience as a military trainer, and put together a course. As of now, you are in charge of turning Cadet Conquest here into the warrant officer she aspires to be. You are also in charge of this team of experts, but don’t take any guff from them, and don’t be easy on your trainee. If she’s to control ship systems, she has to be as tough and reliable as any other officer. More so. Got it?”

“Aye aye, sir.” Bull turned to the hologram. “Adjust your uniform, Cadet, like the admiral said. From now on you will keep your eyes caged and you will speak when you are spoken to, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” Michelle barked, snapping to attention.

“Now turn her off, or freeze her,” Bull said.

“What?” Doctor Egolu stepped toward the major with a hand out, as if to interfere.

The huge Marine snapped, “Doctor, I am now your supervisor. Put the cadet in stasis, or whatever it is you do.”

The scientist turned to the technician at the board and nodded, her face set in shock. The tech tapped the console and Michelle froze in place, like a statue or a still life.

Bull went on to the Marine NCO at his elbow, “First Sergeant Gunderson, set up a rotation of reliable Marines to stand watch with the deadman EMP, then get us the nearest conference room and make sure it’s got access to standard audiovisual and computer systems. After that, get Personnel to cough up a list of military trainers and drill instructors aboard. Make sure Sergeant Major Repeth is on it. Go to it.”

Gunderson acknowledged and hurried from the area.

“Doctor,” Bull turned to the lab chief again, “I need you to install holoprojectors in a room at least, oh, twenty meters on a side, preferably larger, somewhere near the conference room. That will be our training area. Create a complete virtual reality overlay with wireless links, so that the human trainers and the…and Cadet Conquest can share. I want it as complete as possible, Doctor – all five senses, pain and pleasure, everything. And make sure she has no special advantages, no tricks. She has to feel like a human being, no more, no less.”

“Yes, Major. We can do that.” Egolu wiped her hands on the front of her lab coat, turned to her team, and began to issue instructions.

“Looks like you have things well in hand, Bull,” Absen said mildly.

“Yes, sir. We’ll see what she’s made of.”

The admiral pointed a finger at ben Tauros. “Just like any other cadet, Major. No more, no less, no different. I’ll want daily reports, and the civilians will give me separate ones from their perspective. This may be the most important boot camp you ever ran.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Bull stripped off his helmet and shook his bald cranium, rolling his shoulders. “I got it, sir.”

Absen nodded, jerked his head at Ekara, and boarded the cart with the small engineer. Tobias hopped onto the rear. Once they were rolling toward
Desolator
, he looked at Ekara and asked, “What did you think?”

Ekara blew air out in a prolonged sigh. “I’m still worried, but for a far different reason, sir. Now I’m wondering if she’s
too
human.”

“From what I understand, she’s just the way she looks – about twenty years old in terms of experiences, all in virtual worlds. Real reality is new to her.”

“Yes, sir. I think it was brilliant to put her through military training, though.”

Absen glanced sharply at Ekara. “You blowing smoke, Commander?”

“Never, sir. I’m just happy you noticed her deficiency, and moved to correct it.”

“People aren’t machines, Commander. Not even machine people, I’m coming to realize.”

“I’ll have to reserve judgment on that sir, if you don’t mind.”

Absen clapped Ekara on the shoulder. “Please do. I don’t need yes-men. In fact…” He stroked his jaw, then grabbed onto a handgrip as they rounded a corner, “I want you to be my Red Team on this. I’ll tell Bull you have complete authority to observe anything, but you won’t interfere. Watch everything they do, civilians and military, and if anything seems out of line, get ahold of me pronto on my link comm. Daily reports from you too.”